The invention relates to an oven for by means of a heat source heat-treating food pieces placed on a grid in a cabinet.
Ovens for heat treating meals in form of food pieces like for example French fried potatoes is widely utilized in places where there is a demand for getting the meal served easily and quickly.
The publication WO 95/13734 discloses an oven of this kind. This oven comprises a heat-treating chamber with a grid in form of a rotatable drum in which the food pieces are exposed to heat radiation from quartz lamps while simultaneously rotating the drum.
A draw back of this construction is that the temperature in the chamber becomes rather high whereby vaporized substances discharged from the food pieces tend to disintegrate so that malodorous and unhealthy compounds are formed.
Another draw back consists in the fact that such compounds tend to stick to the surface of the hot lamps with the disadvantageous result that the lamps becomes more or less useless and their surface temperature becomes higher than their material can stand.
This known oven also is costly to manufacture. Their complicated structure moreover makes them liable to break down during operation.
Charging the oven with a portion of food pieces requires the following steps.
Opening of a first in-let to the heat-treating chamber and then a second in-let to the drum, charging the drum with food pieces to be heat-treated after which the second in-let opening and the first inlet opening need to be closed again for being able to heat treat the charged food pieces.
The discharging of the finished heat-treated food pieces takes place in the following way.
Turning the drum to a predetermined discharging position, opening a discharge opening by turning a slide gate about the axis of the drum, discharging the heat-treated food pieces through the discharge opening and closing said opening again.
The heat treatment of the food pieces in this known oven also is a relatively slow process owing to the fact that the grid is a drum with a relatively small effective grid area
The limited size of the discharge opening and the circular shape of the drum moreover implies that the discharging operation requires time and that emptying of the drum frequently is not complete every time a portion of food pieces has been prepared.
The food pieces are furthermore falling through the discharge opening influenced only by the gravity.
It goes without saying that utilizing of this known oven need to be extremely laborious and time wasting. The oven therefore also is unfit for heat-treating portions of food pieces in rapid succession.
Said known oven for heat-treating portions of food pieces therefore has a relatively small capacity and a large space requirement.